The Urban Elf

I've been listening to my friend Drioux's music a lot lately.

When my birthday arrives in a few days it will have been one month since my friend Drioux Galván left this world. He left not in an apocalyptic blaze of performance art pyrotechnics suitable to his creative persona but in the far more common way, quietly, in a hospital bed succumbing to the struggle. As I thought about Drioux in the days leading up to his death I kept coming back (as I still do now) to the Japanese concepts of wabi-sabi and Kintsugi. They are respectively the philosophy of finding beauty in the imperfect, impermanent or incomplete, and the repair of broken ceramics with lacquer and precious metal dust to transform that which would be discarded into a beautiful and unique treasure. Drioux was beautiful for his brokenness, simultaneously strong and vulnerable. And he used that to create beautiful art sometimes indistinguishable from the artist himself. Filling the cracks with feathers and shining metal, honing the rough edges to obsidian blades provocatively peeking from within a mirrored sequin gleam. He had a big heart and loved passionately. He was always a pedal to the floor kind of person in all things, and that is likely part of why he is gone. I will miss him greatly. I have lost a good friend and the world has lost a great talent. Drioux always found a way to make beauty from pain and find humor in the darkness. I hope that I can do the same.

This may be my new favorite song.